meres and watery channels crowded with waterfowl, were continually visited by gallant hunting and hawking trains. The picturesque interest of that far-off princely life, rich in all the adornments of rarest art, and fresh with the springing joy of that hopeful age, is enhanced for us by its dimness. It has all the poetic charm of a half-obliterated fresco. These historic figures appear to our vision in that stiffness and innocence and decorative grace, that mingling of mediæval romance and Renaissance beauty with which they were doubtless represented by the primitive painters who covered the walls of Galeazzo’s palaces in Milan and Pavia with scenes of the ducal life—frescoes, alas! long perished. The picture of the city at this time would be bright indeed but for the plague-spots of vice and cruelty in the ruler, and of corruption in the people. Acquiescence in tyranny, and the new luxury of life, had bred effeminacy and servility in the citizens. But there were some among them who could not forget their shame. This motley prince, himself an early and crude product of the still undisciplined spirit of the Renaissance, was destined to perish by the operation of that same spirit. The very arrogance of blood and brain which drove him to excess swelled the indignation of the youths who assembled in the school of the humanist Cola Montana, and followed the finger of their preceptor as he pointed with scorn to the spectacle of the Duke passing with extravagant pomp across the Piazza dell’ Arengo, and to the obsequious train of nobles and magistrates in gorgeous attire attending him, and contrasted the degradation and pusillanimity of these courtiers with the noble simplicity of the Carthaginian and Roman patriots who had won immortal fame by giving their lives for their country. Cola, who was himself secretly envenomed against the Duke on account of personal wrongs, never ceased to hold up before his pupils the example of Brutus and the lofty ideal of virtue and self-sacrifice which inspired their classic ancestors. Inflamed by his eloquence and by a mingling of pedantic pride and youthful enthusiasm, these sons of fathers who remembered the brief hope of the Ambrosian Republic formed a resolution to rid the State of the monstrous tyranny which oppressed it. Girolamo Olgiati, Gio. Ant. Lampugnano and Carlo Visconte were the chief conspirators. The lofty indignation of the two latter was aggravated by personal grievances, but the motives of Olgiati, whose sensitive mind had been moulded for years by Cola Montana, seems to have been pure of all egoism except a beautiful self-conceit. They communicated their plot to a few trusty comrades, and went about the city secretly stirring up discontent. In spite of the general prosperity poverty existed, and it happened that the season had been bad and scarcity threatened. The populace could not see beyond this immediate evil, and all groaned together under the